A Basketball Play-By-Play Education

I didn’t know exactly when the game would start, so I showed up shortly after the junior varsity contest tipped off. That’s when I noticed my broadcast position was less than ideal – on the stage behind one of the baskets. A center-court location would’ve been preferable, but I wasn’t nervous; I’d been preparing to call basketball games for quite some time and I was certain I was ready. I’d spoken briefly with Kalamazoo Christian High School’s head coach and I knew the starters. I didn’t have any statistics, but it was a high school game and the first game of the season, so I didn’t think statistics would matter much. Also, I was working with an analyst, who would help fill in the gaps.

The first few minutes of the game were a bit of a struggle, because I was still learning the players on both teams. And, it was even harder to identify the combatants when they were on the opposite end of the floor from our broadcast position. But, as the seconds ticked off of Kalamazoo Christian’s brand new purple scoreboard, I was starting to get comfortable.

Then, Kalamazoo Christian substituted.

That season, Kalamazoo Christian felt they had ten players who could start for them. Of course, you can only have half that number on the court at a given time, so they decided to break up that group of ten into a first unit and a second unit; each unit would always play together. The head coach, wary of revealing too much to someone he’d just met, didn’t tell me about these two units in our pre-game chat. If Kalamazoo Christian subbed in a more traditional fashion – one or two guys in the game here, another guy in the game there – I would’ve had an easier adjustment. Instead, five new players came in at once. Fortunately, my broadcast partner – who had been Kalamazoo Christian’s play-by-play broadcaster the previous few seasons before sliding into the analyst’s chair upon my arrival – helped me out and disaster was averted.

That game took place nine years ago this December. And, I’ve been calling basketball ever since.

Even though that game in a tiny gym with wooden, fold out bleachers in the southwest corner of Michigan was my first on-air basketball broadcast, I’d been practicing for several years. During my junior year at Syracuse University, I decided to get serious about pursuing a career in play-by-play. Syracuse is known as a play-by-play broadcaster factory but WAER, the on-campus radio station where many of those play-by-players got their start, required students to start working their way up the station’s hierarchy as freshmen before (hopefully) getting a chance to call a handful of Syracuse basketball and/or football games as upperclassmen. Play-by-play wasn’t on my radar for much of my first two years of college – I thought I wanted to be a television sports anchor – so I never considered working at WAER and, by my junior year, it was too late for me to get a chance to do play-by-play there. Instead, I purchased tickets for seats in the upper reaches of the Carrier Dome, where I would call basketball games into my tape recorder. One of the first games I remember doing was a contest against Seton Hall, which Syracuse’s Allen Griffin won with a 15-foot jumper in the closing seconds. I was disappointed when I listened back to the tape and heard how out-of-breath and raspy I sounded. My voice was very close to a yell in the final minutes of that close game and I sounded like an unabashed Syracuse fan who was calling one of their games, which is what I was.

That tape recorder continued to get a workout after I graduated from Syracuse. That first winter in the “real world” was spent in living at home in New York City, where I was either working, visiting my girlfriend in Massachusetts or doing basketball play-by-play into my tape recorder. I lived a 20-minute bus ride from Manhattan College, which had one of the best mid-major teams in the country that year and I was a frequent fixture in the top row of Manhattan’s Draddy Gymnasium bleachers, my recorder and notes in tow. Columbia University’s basketball team wasn’t nearly as good, but their campus was easy to get to via subway after work, so I often found myself calling many of their games as well. I would prep for games at work, using the team websites for statistics and player information. I would turn a manila folder into my spotting chart – a technique I learned from Dave Pasch, one of my adjunct professors in college, who doubled as the radio voice of Syracuse basketball and football. Player numbers were written on the folder in black Sharpie and all other information was copiously scribbled in black ink; each team got one half of the manila folder. A yellow legal pad was used to write down each team’s schedule and other notes. Since I didn’t have access to in-game statistics,I taught myself how to keep track of each player’s points and fouls on the folder during games.

I employed the same manila-folder-and-legal-pad system when I started doing Kalamazoo Christian’s games, except high school teams didn’t have websites with statistics and player notes, something I wasn’t prepared for. But, after that first game, I got better. I started photocopying all of the high school basketball box scores in the local paper and would file them away, so I’d have some basic statistics for every team. Before games, I would look for the opposing coach and ask him for his starting lineup, key reserves and basic information about his squad. I also served as an analyst on the college basketball broadcasts for Division III Kalamazoo College, which helped me to see the floor better and pick out some of the nuances in team defense and offense, especially away from the ball. And, as I did more Kalamazoo Christian games, it became easier to see what was happening off the ball; I started noticing who was setting screens and what players were doing to get into proper position to rebound or shoot before the ball came their way. My confidence grew, and I realized I had a chance to become a very competent basketball voice.

I really came into my own as a basketball play-by-play broadcaster my first winter in Binghamton, New York. I moved there from Kalamazoo to call baseball but, I was employed by the team just for the season, rather than year-round by the radio station, like I was in Kalamazoo. I landed a job calling high school basketball for a small-town radio station outside of Binghamton, but that wasn’t going to be enough to pay the bills. I was working in pizza delivery when I learned that The College of St. Rose – a Division II school two hours away, in Albany – had just lost their play-by-play broadcaster about two weeks before the start of their season. On a whim, I left a phone message for St. Rose’s athletic director and, two days later, their sports information director called me. After overnighting a CD with clips of my Kalamazoo Christian basketball play-by-play and an in-person meeting, I was hired and my pizza delivery days were over. Most of St. Rose’s basketball games were part of doubleheaders – the women would tip off first, and the men’s game would follow a half-hour after the women’s contest was done – and they wanted me to call all of their men’s and women’s games. Fortunately, St. Rose’s games didn’t conflict with the high school games I’d already agreed to do, but it was still a hectic schedule. I usually called a high school game on Friday night before waking up early on Saturday morning to drive at least two hours to call a pair of St. Rose’s games. One Saturday, I called a St. Rose doubleheader in the afternoon before driving back to the Binghamton area to do a high school basketball playoff game that night. When I wasn’t calling a game, I was traveling to one or preparing for another. That winter, I did about 5-6 games a week and wound up calling 75 basketball games, all of them solo. However, when the season ended, I wasn’t burned out; I was actually energized because I realized that, not only could I call a decent game, but I loved calling basketball. Baseball will always be my favorite sport to broadcast, but I now realized that basketball was a close second.

The following year, I was prepared for another hectic winter of calling basketball when I learned Division I Binghamton University needed a women’s basketball broadcaster. Thanks to contacts I’d cultivated, I was the top candidate for the job. By the end of my interview, I was hired, and I called Binghamton women’s basketball for four years, eventually giving up the gig calling high school games (Instead, I refereed high school and middle school basketball games, which increased my understanding of the game and the rules even further). Cutting back to “only” 30 or so games a year still proved enjoyable.

Wednesday, I start my third year as the voice of University of Nebraska Omaha basketball and my tenth year overall calling basketball. Since there’s more information available, college basketball games easier to call than high school games. Over the years, I’ve learned developing a good relationship with your team’s head coach is invaluable. So is planning ahead and preparing for games in advance, especially if you have a stretch of three or four games in a seven-to-ten day period. Great preparation will lead to me being able to drop the right anecdote or statistic at the right time, which is crucial in basketball play-by-play, since there are few breaks in the action.

Even though a lot has changed since that first game in Kalamazoo, I still get excited whenever I put on a headset and I still look forward to the moment when the ball is thrown into the air for the opening tip. Hopefully, that excitement lasts for a long time.

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We Were Merely Freshmen

It’s hard for me to believe 15 years have passed since Mom and I loaded up her Toyota Corolla and my grandparents’ Lincoln Town Car early one morning and drove west, and then north, until we arrived at Syracuse University for the start of my freshman year of college. It was raining when we loaded the cars, it rained the entire 4 ½-hour drive and rained even harder once we got to campus, but the lousy weather did little to dampen my enthusiasm. I had plenty of expectations, even though I didn’t really know what to expect. In the end, everything worked out: I got an education and I enjoyed my four-year stay at a great university. And, I learned a lot.

I learned that getting along with your roommate is important, and it starts with communication. Part of the reason me and my freshman-year roommate meshed is because we weren’t afraid to tell each other if something was bothering us; if he wanted me to turn my music down, he’d ask me politely and I complied. Ditto if he was doing something that I found annoying or intrusive. I was amazed when I heard from my fellow freshman who had issues with their roommates they never discussed. It’s best not to let things linger; much easier to nip things in the bud than it is to let problems grow until they become unmanageable or difficult to fix. My roommate and I didn’t have any significant issues because we didn’t let problems linger. We weren’t best friends, but we had a great relationship.

That’s another thing about that first year of college: just because you’re rooming with someone, that doesn’t mean that person has to be your best friend or the one you do everything with. As a matter of fact, doing everything with your roommate is the quickest way for the two of you to despise each other. It’s possible that you and your randomly selected roommate will eventually be in each other’s wedding parties, but the odds are stacked against that happening. Don’t force friendships, let them happen organically. With few exceptions, everyone winds up with at least a handful of friends by the time they graduate. Do things you’re interested in and try to associate yourself with people who are doing things that interest you and friendship will follow. You may meet someone who becomes your lifelong friend the first week of classes, but that’s not the norm. The person who wound up becoming my best friend at Syracuse lived on the same floor of my freshman dorm as I did, but we barely spoke the first two or three months of the semester. Now, we always manage to keep in touch despite living most of our adult lives in different parts of the country.

There’s nothing wrong with holding onto some things from “back home”; one of the first things I did when I arrived at Syracuse was put a New York City subway map on the wall next to my bed. However, the track record of freshmen holding onto that girlfriend or boyfriend from “back home” isn’t very good. At Syracuse, it seemed all of the freshman ladies began the year with boyfriends from home but, within a few months, those guys were a distant memory. Freshman year of college is like being on that MTV show The Real World; you’re better off going into it without any romantic attachments because those attachments rarely survive the experience. If you take a liking to someone with a back-home beau, be patient. When you start hearing about the problems the apple of your eye is having with his or her love, listen and try to contain your excitement. By the time they break up, you’re already entrenched. If I had a quarter for every one of my freshman friends who eventually wound up with the one they were pining for despite the latter’s initial romantic attachments, I would’ve had enough to do laundry for at least a week (By the way, don’t go to college not knowing how to properly do laundry. You may think laundry’s easy, but wait until you learn you shrunk your favorite outfit or that your clothes have turned different colors).

Don’t be one of those students who automatically assumes the town or city his or her college is located in sucks. When I first arrived in Syracuse, New York, I had little desire to learn anything about my new home. I made fun of the locals and their nasally accents, bemoaned the lack of a 24-hour public transit system, bitched when several inches of snow fell from the perpetually cloudy skies on Halloween, joked about the tiny and aging downtown and wondered why such a boring and lifeless community needed not one, but two daily newspapers – back then, Syracuse had a morning paper and an afternoon paper. The second semester of freshman year, I interned in the promotions department of a local radio station group, which forced me to go on remotes and appearances with the stations in Syracuse and the surrounding area. And, a funny thing happened: I realized Syracuse was a vibrant community with a lot of cool places and some decent entertainment options. I befriended a few of the locals and keep in touch with some of them to this day. Of course, it’s possible the community where your college is located is lousy, but at least give your college’s locale a chance and make an effort to explore it and learn about it before you declare it the worst college town in North America.

When I was in college, I used to joke it would be a lot more fun if it weren’t for the going-to-class part. And, you’re there to get an education, so you should take your schooling seriously. Don’t be like the guy who lived down the hall from me the first semester of freshman year who got an 0.9 GPA (We never saw him again after that first semester). But, when you can, try to take classes you think you’d enjoy. At Syracuse, I took a one-credit class in Basketball and a two-credit Beer and Wine Appreciation course. Unfortunately, work commitments forced me to drop a one-credit Social Dance class. When I was a senior, I took a freshman-level American History class, just because I love American history. Taking classes you like is the easiest way to boost your GPA and makes the mundane classes more bearable.

Ultimately, going to college is about leaving with a degree, but it’s also about having fun. If you’re away from home, it’s a chance to have minimal-to-no parental supervision for an extended period, along with few bills or responsibilities, a combination that likely won’t present itself again. So, get your work done, but enjoy your college experience. Go to the parties and hang out at the clubs and the bars. Spend endless nights staying up late with friends, and make a trip with them to the food court to get unhealthy crap from Burger King at three in the morning just because you can. Rush the court or the field after your school beats its biggest rival or pulls off a major upset. Get your heart broken and break someone else’s heart. Don’t be afraid to experiment – within reason. Don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone – within reason.

I knew I’d come full circle when it rained the morning of my graduation. But, just like the day I arrived at Syracuse, the subpar weather didn’t minimize my enthusiasm. I was leaving with a bachelor’s degree and many wonderful memories. Most importantly, I was leaving with peace of mind because I knew I’d gotten the most out of my college experience.

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How I Became A Beer Snob

It was about an eight-block walk from the American Legion hall to the subway station. Maria’s house was on the way, so we walked with Maria and her dad, who was carrying a half-empty case of Coors Light left over from Maria’s Sweet 16 party. When we got to the steps in front of their row house, he opened one of the silver cans and took a sip.

“You want some?” Maria’s dad asked, barely extending the can toward us.

“No thanks,” either Marc or Burt said. The twins and I were mutual friends of Maria’s and we’d taken the 90-minute subway ride together from the Bronx to Sunset Park, Brooklyn for the party. I laughed nervously.

“No, I’m serious,” Maria’s dad continued. “Kids need to start drinking young. That way, when they’re old enough, they’re not wimps when it comes to alcohol.”

I was 15. Marc and Burt were two years older than me. We each took a sip; the Coors Light was bitter. Maria walked with us the rest of the way to the subway station, finishing the can during the trip.

That was my introduction to beer.

I was never one of those teenagers who saw drinking – and getting drunk – as a rite of passage. As a freshman at Syracuse University, I attended many of the off-campus house parties where, for two or three bucks, I could have as many 12-ounce cupfuls of keg beer as my 18-year-old heart desired. But, I rarely had more than a couple of cups of beer – even my unrefined pallet knew the beer in those kegs was substandard – and I never got drunk; I went to those house parties less for the drinking and more for the chance to hang out with friends and to meet other people. Unlike many of my underage college peers, I never tried to acquire a fake ID or sneak into the myriad bars near campus. If beer were made available to me I’d have some, but I didn’t view a lack of beer as an acute problem.

I did know that, when I had beer, I wanted to drink good beer. I have no idea where the desire to drink something other than the likes of Budweiser and Miller came from; I grew up in a family of beer and liquor drinkers, but I don’t remember anyone who had discriminating taste when it came to beer. Perhaps since I had little desire to get drunk, I decided that, if I was going to drink, I wanted to enjoy what I was drinking. As an underage drinker, I rarely had a choice of beers but, when I did, I always went for the most exotic-sounding brew available. Heineken? Beck’s? Labatt? Those are imported, so they must be good! Michelob Ultra? It’s got “ultra” in its name so it has to be special! It didn’t take long for me to learn that some of the “exotic” beers were just as bad as the “non-exotic” ones. However, no matter what, I refused to drink light beer: I tend to eschew “light” products in general and I didn’t want to choose my beer based on its calorie count.

I wanted to learn more about the beers I was drinking so, my senior year at Syracuse, I enrolled in a two-credit Beer and Wine Appreciation course that met once a week. The class was taught by a husky-voiced adjunct professor who was a local restaurant owner. For the first half of the semester, the class focused on wine: the world’s main wine-making regions, different types of wine and how to properly evaluate and taste wine; we tasted at least two or three different wines per class.  I found that portion of the class interesting, although I didn’t retain much of what I learned; however, because of it, I’ve never felt intimidated or apprehensive when it comes to purchasing wine and I know how to properly open a bottle of Champagne.

The second half of the semester proved to be more compelling to me; for those eight weeks, representatives from different breweries visited the class, each bringing beer for us to try. We heard from everyone from Anheuser-Busch to local brewers of craft beer (Upstate New York is home to lots of smaller breweries). I learned about the difference between ales and lagers and what hops and malt do to a beer’s flavor. But, most importantly, I got to try lots of different beers, helping me develop my likes and dislikes. My favorite beers were the flavored stouts and the sweeter beers in general, as well as the pale ales. I wasn’t as crazy about beers with a high concentration of hops, because those tended to be more bitter.

Fortunately, I was going to college in the right city for beer experimentation. There were several bars in Syracuse that offered a wide selection of beers and I took full advantage. Once I got out of college and started to travel for work, I got to experiment even more. Because of the craft beer revolution that’s taken place over the last couple of decades, nearly every locale has its own beers. Whenever I’ve moved to a new city or when I’m on the road for work, I always try the local beers and I’m rarely disappointed. When I lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan I fell in love with Oberon, a heavy, sweet summer beer made by Bell’s Brewery; part of the reason my favorite bar in Kalamazoo was my favorite bar is because they’d have Oberon on tap late into October, long after other places had exhausted their supply. My eight months in Yakima, Washington made me a fan of Mac & Jacks, a rich amber ale unlike any beer I’ve ever had anywhere; unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find it since I left the Pacific Northwest. I currently live in Kansas City, where I like drinking the beers put out by the Boulevard and Free State breweries; I first tried Boulevard’s pale ale several years ago, when I visited a Springfield, Missouri restaurant that had it on tap. I miss the Brooklyn Brewery beers I drank on a regular basis when I lived in New York City and in Binghamton, New York; their brown ale is the perfect beer as far as I’m concerned. However, I have been able to find another one of my favorites – the Vermont-brewed Magic Hat #9 – at a handful of liquor stores in the Kansas City area.

My friends make fun of me because they know I’ll only drink “good” beer; I will pass on drinking beer entirely if there isn’t a craft beer offering available; I’m a self-professed “beer snob”. I am proud that several of my friends, and a few of the women I’ve dated, credit me with broadening their horizons when it comes to beer; I believe that anyone who drinks, regardless of their taste in alcohol, can find a beer they like if they look hard enough. There is always a six-pack of craft beer in my refrigerator and I enjoy getting others interested in the beers I enjoy.

However, if you’re expecting to find a Coors Light in my fridge, you’ll be disappointed.

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Fan Or Media?

Thanks to my job as a reporter covering the Kansas City Royals for their flagship radio station, I’ve developed quite a following on Twitter. Recently, one of my followers asked me if I was a fan of the Royals. I replied that, while I like to see the Royals succeed, I don’t consider myself a fan. My response led to a lengthy Twitter discussion about why I’m not a fan of the Royals; some suggested I was a traitor for not unabashedly rooting for the Royals and others assumed I don’t care about the Royals if I’m not a fan of the team.

I can’t help that I grew up in New York City rooting for the New York Mets, rather than in Kansas City rooting for the Royals. I suppose I could toss my past aside and pretend the Royals are the only team I’ve ever cared about, but that would be disingenuous. Even though I do a Royals post-game show and have many people who follow me on Twitter because I cover the Royals, I don’t hide my past or present allegiances. I learned about and fell in love with baseball thanks to the Mets and pretending otherwise would be ignoring a key part of what’s made me who I am.

When I first took the Royals reporter job, just before the start of the 2009 baseball season, I scoured the internet for information about the Royals teams of the previous few seasons, taking detailed notes that almost filled up an entire legal pad. Now, in my fourth season covering the Royals, I feel like know as much about the team as anyone who didn’t grow up following them could. I’ve gotten to know many of the players, coaches and executives – past and present – very well. I enjoy interacting with and talking to Royals fans and I feel I have a good grasp of the fan base’s mood. I like to see the Royals do well – it’s easier and more enjoyable covering a winning team than it is covering a losing team – but I still don’t consider myself a fan.

I am a fan of Syracuse University’s teams, especially football and men’s basketball. I am a fan of the New York Giants. I am a fan of the New York Knicks. I will celebrate the successes of those teams and brood over their failures. I will always wear merchandise with the logos and colors of those teams. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I will always care whether Syracuse, the Giants and the Knicks win or lose. However, if I stop covering the Royals, I will no longer follow them closely. Sure, I’ll still be interested in how they do – I occasionally peruse box scores, rosters and schedules for teams I covered a decade ago – but I will no longer concern myself with their day-to-day activities. I no longer consider myself a Mets fan because I’ve spent the last decade immersed in coverage of other baseball teams, making it difficult for me to follow the Mets closely at the Major League level; this is true even though I covered one of the Mets minor league affiliates for four years.

Some say covering a team you aren’t a fan of is a good thing; it leads to more impartial coverage, they say. I think there are advantages to covering a team you grew up rooting for: you’re already familiar with that team’s history, you know what’s important to that team’s fans and you know how those fans think. And, seeing the inner workings and getting to know the on- and off-field members of a team decreases the chances of a fan-turned-media member becoming an unabashed cheerleader. Even the most plugged in fans are prone to speculation about the motives and character of a player, coach or team, speculation that often isn’t very informed or is based on what others have told them. On the other hand, media who cover a team are less likely to speculate because they have a better idea of what’s going on. And, when they do speculate, it’s usually well-informed speculation based on their intimate knowledge of and on- and off-the-record access to a team and its key players. Unlike fans, media who cover a team every day are less likely to run hot and cold about a team or player’s performance because they usually have a better understanding of the big picture. If you are a fan of a team, covering that team every day will make you less of a fan and more of a shrewd observer.

So, no, I’m not a Royals fan and I doubt I’ll ever really be a Royals fan. But, I do enjoy covering them and I hope they succeed in turning things around and eventually make it back to the World Series. Because, who wouldn’t want to cover a World Series?

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When An Upset Is Not Okay

This week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. March Madness! The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament! College basketball games all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday! It’s a sports fan’s nirvana! Like most college basketball fans, I love the first weekend of the tournament because of its unpredictability. There are always a few upsets, a few games where lower-seeded teams from mid-major conferences – teams that only got in because they got the automatic bid that winning their conference tournament affords them – beat schools from the power conferences, like the Big East or the Atlantic Coast Conference. Us Americans love underdog stories and the best chance to see a David slay a Goliath in the NCAA Tournament is in the tourney’s first weekend, before the field is pared down to 16 teams from 68.

However, no one wants to see their team fall victim to a lower-seeded team. Upsets are fun and delightful and a great story until one happens to your favorite squad. So, fans of the Goliaths of the college basketball world love the Davids…as long as they beat all of the other Goliaths.

*          *          *

I was worried as soon as I saw it on Sunday.

My beloved Syracuse Orange basketball team got off to a 20-1 start in the 2004-2005 season, only to struggle down the stretch before regrouping to win the Big East Conference Tournament, their first conference championship during my time as a fan. I knew they’d probably be a three or four seed and I was right; they earned a four seed. I was happy they’d be playing their first- and second-round games on Friday and next Sunday, respectively, in Worchester, Massachusetts. Syracuse, located right in the middle of New York State, draws quite a few of its students from the New England region, so I knew there would be plenty of Syracuse fans at their first two tournament games.

Then I saw the 13 seed we’d play in the first round.

The University of Vermont.

I knew about the Vermont Catamounts; they’d been one of the better mid-major basketball programs the last few years and I’d seen them play a handful of times on television. The state of Vermont isn’t known as a basketball hotbed, but it did produce Taylor Coppenrath, the Catamounts do-everything, 6’9” forward who was the nation’s second-leading scorer that year and one of the best players in the country, at any level. He’d led Vermont to their third straight America East Conference title and NCAA Tournament appearance, so I knew they wouldn’t be intimidated by big and bad Syracuse. Also, Worchester is closer to Vermont’s campus in Burlington than it is to Syracuse’s campus, meaning plenty of Catamounts fans would be able to make the trip to the game.

Everything was set up perfectly for David to slay Goliath. I worried about Vermont all week. I was living in Kalamazoo, Michigan at the time, but was less than two weeks from moving to Binghamton, New York for a new job. I decided to watch the Vermont-Syracuse game at one of my favorite hangouts – a place that had a room with eight televisions and would be showing every tourney game uninterrupted – and many of my friends and co-workers showed up to watch the game with me, the gathering turning into my impromptu Kalamazoo send-off.

The game was close from the start. Syracuse just couldn’t seem to get any traction offensively. Vermont wasn’t playing particularly well, but they just kept hanging around, which is exactly what an underdog needs to do. Syracuse was playing sloppily and committing too many turnovers; most of the turnovers were the result of careless play, as opposed to stifling Vermont defense. The Orange led by four at the half, but I still felt uneasy.

As halftime progressed, I noticed a few Michigan State University fans filtering into the bar. Kalamazoo’s about a 90-minute drive from Michigan State’s East Lansing campus, so the Spartans had plenty of alumni and fans in the area. The Spartans were scheduled to take on Old Dominion in Worchester, right after Vermont-Syracuse ended, and the winners of the two games would play each other on Sunday. So, Michigan State fans had quite a bit of interest in the outcome of Vermont-Syracuse. And, they’d rather see the Spartans face the lower seed on Sunday.

Coaches will tell you basketball games are often decided in the first few minutes of the second half and I knew Syracuse needed to start the half strong, grow their lead into double digits and put Vermont away. The second half opened with the two teams trading baskets before Coppenrath converted a three-point play to make it a one-point game. Syracuse was up by three when Vermont got the ball back and T.J. Sorrentine, the Catamounts pesky 5’11” guard and second-leading scorer, drilled a game-tying three from NBA range that nearly made my head explode; Sorrentine, Vermont’s best shooter, hadn’t hit a three the entire first half. But, shooters often need just one make to get them going and I feared for the worst when I saw Sorrentine’s three go through the bottom of the net. My fears proved to be correct, as Vermont hit a three on their next possession to take their first lead of the half. Syracuse, to their credit, didn’t allow Vermont to pull away, but the tables were turned. It now looked like Syracuse was the underdog and Vermont was the favorite; the Catamounts seemed to have all of the confidence Syracuse lacked and the Catamounts played with a lead most of the half.

My palms started to sweat as the game moved into the final two minutes. The contest was tied before Hakim Warrick, who’d been named Player of the Year in the Big East Conference the previous week, unleashed an emphatic dunk, giving Syracuse a two-point lead with 90 seconds left. On Vermont’s next possession, Syracuse inexplicably left Coppenrath – a great mid-range shooter – wide open on the right elbow and, not surprisingly, the senior buried a 17-foot jumper, knotting the score with less than a minute remaining. We need to win this game right now, I thought to myself. Syracuse followed by going to Warrick in the left post, his favorite spot on the floor. However, Warrick, perhaps a bit overeager, threw an elbow into the Vermont defender as he began to make his move to the hoop and was charged with an offensive foul with about a half minute left. The bar erupted in cheers as I screamed at all eight of the televisions. In the closing seconds, it looked like Vermont had the game won, but Germain Mopa Njila, the Catamounts Cameroonian forward who averaged less than six points per game but torched Syracuse for 20 points that night, stepped on the baseline just before hitting an acrobatic layup.

The game was headed to overtime. Now, I was certain Syracuse was going to lose.

I felt a little better when Gerry McNamara, Syracuse’s sharpshooting guard who’d been firing blanks all evening, stole a pass and went coast-to-coast for a layup and a two-point Syracuse lead with just over three minutes left in the five-minute overtime session. But, with two minutes remaining, Mopa Njila drilled a three to put Vermont back up and excite the Michigan State faithful once again. “Germain Mopa Njila with the game of a lifetime!” exclaimed broadcaster Gus Johnson. Why did he have to have the game of a lifetime against my team? I thought. I had less wholesome thoughts when Warrick turned it over on Syracuse’s next possession, followed by Vermont milking the clock and Sorrentine hitting a three from – no exaggeration – 30 feet out; he was a step or two in front of the half-court circle. A minute remained. A deafening cheer went up in the bar. The television cameras caught Vermont coach Tom Brennan with his arms raised in celebration. My head dropped into my hands, where it shook slowly; I wanted to crawl under the bar. Syracuse had a couple more opportunities after that, but it didn’t matter. They were toast after Sorrentine’s deep three. I slipped out of the bar as soon as the final horn sounded without saying goodbye to anyone; I didn’t want to watch Vermont celebrate. I haven’t seen most of the people who were there to see me off since that night.

This season, Syracuse is a one seed in the NCAA Tournament and a national championship contender; they will be the favorite in nearly every game they play from here on out [This was written before Syracuse center Fab Melo was declared ineligible for the tourney]. In a field with many Goliaths, they are one of the biggest of them all. And, hopefully, they will break all of the Davids’ slingshots in half.

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